The Analysis Of Martha Ballard And Elizabeth Murray

The analyses of Martha Ballard and Elizabeth Murray’s lives serve as interpretations of the experiences and roles of women in colonial times specifically those in early America. Both Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and Patricia Cleary evaluate evidence that shows women played necessary and important roles even in a society that often restricted their lives to a sphere of domestic activities. The authors’ analyses demonstrate that even in their usual compliance with those social constructs both Elizabeth Murray and Martha Ballard demonstrated ways in which women could act as successful individuals undeterred by the constraints placed upon their sex.

Martha Ballard may appear to have lived her life as a more reserved and easy-going woman than Elizabeth

Murray, but that didn’t stop her from challenging and defending the importance of women’s efforts in the community, which she herself demonstrated through her midwifery. Ulrich comments on the fact that past analyses of Martha Ballard’s diary have largely ignored most of the entries due to their supposed “trivial” nature and choosing to focus on those that are more “exciting” like the entries of April 1789. However, Ulrich believes that “To extract the river crossings without noting the cold days spent “footing” stockings, to abstract the births without recording the long autumns spent winding quills, pickling meat and sorting cabbages, is to destroy the sinews of this earnest, steady, gentle and courageous record.”(Ulrich 9), the sometimes seemingly dull entries give meaning to Martha Ballard’s place in her community with so many people calling on her for assistance.The routine of her everyday life may become boring in a sense of repetitiveness but that alone entails that she must have been a respected, reliable, and knowledgeable midwife and caregiver. Her diary indicates that she was a hard working and consistent woman who didn’t consider it necessary or useful to record the gossip in her life, but rather the basic events that defined her every day. In the entries that Ulrich provides nearly every day is full of activity for Martha often having her run around to different parts of town to assist women in childbirth or people who were sick, “The Structure of the diary forces us to consider midwifery in the broadest possible context, as one specialty in a larger neighborhood economy, as the most visible feature of a comprehensive and little-known system of early health care, as a mechanism of social control, a strategy for family support, and a deeply personal calling.” (Ulrich 33). Mrs. Ballard never challenged the gender structure in the way Elizabeth Murray did by inviting criticism of herself through actions she knew would be controversial. Murray may have been more outspoken about her capabilities and individualism as a female, but that doesn’t mean Martha Ballard didn’t recognize the importance of the role she played in her community and her family. Ballard’s diary records the hard work of herself and other women in the town whose efforts would’ve otherwise gone unrecognized and unknown if it weren’t for her entries as evidence, “. In a rare instance of records the reference to women’s contributions is given. An account book of William Howard provides, “It not only records when Ephraim Ballard planted the flax, but when she [Martha] and her daughters weeded and harvested it... the many female neighbors who assisted her and her daughters with the combing, spinning, reeling, boiling... Martha’s diary fills in the missing work- and trade- of women.”(Ulrich 29), provides modern day readers with the realization that women were the backbone of a functioning society and economy, and that their “domestic chores” produced resources and if anything saved men the trouble of doing tedious and exhausting work.
Much like Elizabeth Murray, Martha Ballard found her way of life changing in the later years of her life. Murray was facing the time of the revolution, a changing political sphere dividing her family, and accusations of behavior unfitting of a woman while Ballard’s experience was related to age, the development of new interests in the medical profession restricted to males, and family tensions. While Murray faced her conflicts head on Ballard resigned to her diary to record her thoughts accepting that she didn’t want to incite more tension with her son Jonathan. As Martha Ballard’s entries progress there’s evidence of an increase in the role of doctors in the town, and evidence of people being more likely to call upon them for medical attention. Martha even expresses some distaste towards the male doctors and their lack of knowledge about childbirth compared to that of a woman’s, “The English midwife Sarah Stone warned against such “boyish pretenders”, who having attended a few dissections and read the major treatises pretended to understand the manipulative arts so important to midwifery.”(Ulrich 178), referencing the failures of Doctor Benjamin Page in the delivery of children, giving Martha reason to compare his record with her nearly perfect one. Women may not have had the professional training that was available to men but, “In the world of eighteenth century medicine midwives and doctors sought- and generally achieved- similar results.”(Ulrich 58). In her later years Martha faced challenges with her own family. With her husband in jail due to conflict over his job and debts, Martha was on her own still trying to run her home and take care of others. Not only was she alone but she had to cope with her son and his family attempting to and eventually taking over her home, leaving her feeling disrespected, stressed and even more defensive than typical of her character, relieving her frustrations in the vague but more emotional diary entries. Without her diary records of women’s contributions in a typical American town would be largely lacking, Martha serves as a representative of women of the early 1800’s. “She was a gentle woman with a sense of duty and an anatomical curiosity that allowed her to observe autopsies as well as cry over the dead , a courageous woman who never quite learned to stay on her horse, a sharp-eyed and practical woman who kept faith in ultimate justice despite repeated encounters with suicide, murder, and war.”(Ulrich 343). Martha Ballard may have faced her struggles more internally and through the entries in her diary but her experiences as a colonial woman exemplify some of the struggles they faced prior to organized efforts to secure their rights.
Elizabeth Murray lived before Martha Ballard, during the time of the American revolution in which she wholeheartedly believed in the significance of being an independent and successful women.

The way in which Elizabeth found her success was through business, and after that she saw being a shopkeeper as the path for women wanting to begin their lives and support themselves. From then on Elizabeth strived to help other women- not only her family members but friends as well- find the same autonomy that she achieved in her time as a shopkeeper. Elizabeth learned the hard way what marriage could do to women especially in her first marriage, “As a married woman, a femme covert, she had no legal identity separate from her spouse, no command over her resources, and no property of her own.”(Cleary 40), while this line is in reference to her sister-in-law Barbara the same applied to Elizabeth when she married her first husband Thomas Campbell. If it wasn’t clear that the spheres of men and women in shopkeeping and mercantilism were different, the point of view of Benjamin Franklin on female shopkeepers emphasized a distaste for women engaging in similar activities to men. “Franklin’s point was that shopkeepers were dishonest traders who sought to take advantage of their clients.”(Cleary 47), however, “While Franklin may have been intimating that women in trade were more precariously positioned economically and therefore more likely to find deceptive practices a necessity, he offered a general depiction of shopkeepers’ problems that applied equally well to women and men.”(Cleary 47). These lines define the general trend of the period, which suggests that women’s inferiority and incapability had been ingrained for generations. The way women were treated goes back to the very beginning when women were seen as sinners and temptresses, the same ideas carried through the years in order to justify a world “more easily controlled” by a single sex. With those beliefs still in place

it is no wonder why women’s work was still cast in a negative light even when men were participating in similar activities.